The Parchment Girl
by Ripeahunt
Summary: "The parchment girl looks at herself in the mirror, her parchment skin covering her white bones, her blood hair caking her frail head, her flint eyes glaring at the world. The ink and venom pulse under her parchment-skin, and she knows that she has no blood left, and that her hands are already dripping with ink and venom and red blood."


_A/N: So, I wrote this, not really sure if it's any good, but here goes. It probably makes no sense. Inspired by the Coldplay song Clocks. The parchment girl is Ginny, the lonely boy/mouse-lion is Neville, the lost girl/lion-hawk is Luna, the cinnamon ginger is Ron, the brave hawk is Hermione, the hero-lion is Harry, and the mastermind/broken boy is Theodore Nott. The dragon-bat is Snape, the last true lion is McGonagall, and the scared/little dragon is Malfoy. The peacocks are death eaters, the snake is Nagini, and the snake-man/lord is Voldemort. If there are any other issues, don't hesitate to let me know._

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or the song Clocks, those belong to JKR and Coldplay, respectively**_

_The lights go out and I can't be saved  
><em>_Tides that I tried to swim against  
><em>_Have brought me down upon my knees  
><em>_Oh I beg, I beg and plead_

_Confusion never stops  
><em>_Closing walls and ticking clocks  
><em>_Gonna come back and take you home  
><em>_I could not stop that you now know_

_-Clocks, Coldplay_

She's no longer a scared, little girl with ink on her hands. She's grown up, and now the ink is mixed with blood. The snakes writhing in her body leave no room for her, and so she no longer takes up room. Her veins run black with the lifeblood of her conscience, and she doesn't bleed anymore. When her skin is cut, darkness slips out, floating up into the ether of the black sky. Her skin is now parchment, brittle and smooth and breakable, and her white bones can be seen through the parchment-skin that is her body. She no longer looks in the mirror. Her hair, once long and healthy and beautiful, has darkened from the red gold that the sun bleached it to, her freckles absorbed by the oppressive rain and omnipresent clouds, and now she looks like blood and bone and parchment and ink and that is all that she is. When they look at her, she knows they wish to pain her, but her only friend could give pain much worse, and they don't bother her. Their pain is clean and easy, not the raged confusion that her friend introduced her to, and she loves him even more for giving it to her, but she knows that it's wrong, _he_'s wrong, and so she hates him, too. She's now a scared taipan living in a world of vipers and adders and cobras, and she could eat them all for breakfast, but she _doesn't_, because one never attacks a snake in its nest. She simply lies in wait, and the scars on her body show how long they have waited, and the cuts on her thigh show how long she has waited, and she's waited far longer than them, she's been waiting since she was a scared, little girl with ink on her hands and blood on her robes and a black diary. She's been waiting since she was a happy, little girl with cinnamon freckles and golden ginger hair and honeycomb skin. She's still waiting, a scared, flightless girl with blood in her hair and ink in her veins and parchment over her bones. She talks to the snakes now, and they talk back, and they're the only ones who will, because the little dragon has run away scared and all of the flowers are wilting and the lions and lambs alike are cowering in their beds. The parrots' wings are clipped and gone, and the snakes are all hiding. The peacocks still strut, but it is all for show, as their feathers are all but gone. She goes to the bathroom in the hours when the clock has rang twelve but the sun is a long way from waking, and talks to the sink and the doorways and the statues, but ignores the dead. Her friend-ally-sister comes out, and she looks her companion in the eye and feels no pain, and she figures that it's because she's dead already, because she knows that she's not alive anymore. The secret room becomes her room, and yet she still must leave, because her not-family expects her to be a lioness when she's really an inland taipan.

("_But you _love _Quidditch, Ginny!_")

No one understands except for the mouse-lion and the lion-hawk. So the girl with the blood hair found her place, with the lonely, abused boy and the lost, epileptic girl. The lost girl loves rituals, especially blood, and so has been outcast, because a lion-hawk cannot be just as dark as anyone else, cannot be anything but pristine and white and beautiful, and schizophrenia and epilepsy and PTSD aren't perfect things. The lonely boy is scared and abandoned, but a mouse-lion cannot be scared, cannot have flashbacks, cannot be found and nursed by the parchment girl at the third ring of the clock when the sun is gone, cannot be scared of going home every holiday, cannot be anything but fearless, and flinching at physical contact and crying out at loud noise is not fearless. The parchment girl loves them more the more everyone else doesn't, and when the scared hero-lion runs away with the brave hawk grounded in a lion's body and the parchment girl's not-brother, she loves them more than ever, because now all they have is their little militia that will go to a certain doom, because _they're all going to die_, and the rest of the world will hate them. They now live in their secret not-room, and it gets harder and harder to visit her sister-friend-ally, who roams the school freely now, and all of the dead people no longer try to talk to the quietly imposing snake-lion with the blood red hair. The parchment girl and the lonely boy and the lost girl are the only ones that the peacocks don't touch, and it's because the peacocks that touched one of them ended up in the great hall with grins and terrified eyes, blood eagled and scared. The three names were written in blood and fire on the twice stained windows, and no one had touched them since. When the two others looked at the parchment girl, she just smiled, and venom dripped down her chin, sizzling and burning holes into her red and gold uniform. That night, they find out that there is venom in her veins, too, when the crown that they find in the ask room screams and shatters at her blood.

(_Ginny. Luna. Neville._)

They try to get the legendary lion-sword so that the blood girl can lick it, even though the only lion in their group is actually a hawk, but they are caught by the snake-lion, the dragon-bat. The parchment girl _knows_ him even though she doesn't know him at all, and he lets them go with a warning and a look, and they know that he can't protect them next time no matter how much he wants to. They're truly alone, now. But they keep going, and the walls are always painted with blood and venom and ink, and the floors are all wet and slippery, except a fall isn't a bump these days, a fall is _your entire family dies on the morrow, you little mudblood cunt_. The lost girl and the alone boy find each other, and the parchment girl is happy for them, even if she is alone and more vulnerable now than ever, and she can feel that they're healing. But as soon as the world turns cold, and misery tries to mockingly turn their dark, grey, grimy world white, they come and take away the lost, perfect-not-perfect girl, and any healing is ripped apart and their wounds are twice as bad as before. Their walls are no longer the _keep up hope_ blood-ink-venom, they're the _get revenge _blood-ink-venom, and this makes it twice as bad as before. And the trio-turned-duo tries to get their just reward, the mouse and the taipan, both wearing lion fur, and they get into the goblin bank and find the cup and make it out on a dragon that the parchment girl talks to, walking into the flames because fire can't hurt her, not anymore. And later, with their blind flying snake and the pipe snake, the parchment girl tells the lonely boy _everything_, and he doesn't run; he stays with her in the secret room as the sister and brother meet and court. They were both the last ones, but then they weren't, because now they have a friend, a piece of home, from before the nightmares of killings and bells and tunnels and caverns and blindness and petrification. The lonely boy and the parchment girl feel hope for the first time since the lost girl, looking at the two alone-yet-not snakes, and when the parchment girl sees the golden goblet scream and crack and die when she drinks her blood out of it, it tastes like victory, sweet and bitter at the same time.

("_They both have scales, they'll make it work"_)

But their life goes on, and when the world is truly white, the parchment girl brings the lonely boy to her family for the crack between tortures, and they both have to be lions, not a mouse and taipan like they have been. So they lie, and they build up such a good story that they think they'll get away with it. They almost do, but the parchment girl's lioness mother tells her that she must stay home, and so she and the boy run off to the pretty blond and the oldest not-brother of the parchment girl, and go to the pub from there, spinning in and out of fireplaces, hoping that nobody recognizes them, until they are met by the younger brother of the dead father, and walk with the sister to the asking room. They split after that, the mouse-lion staying to command the forces of scared little children dressed in cloaks of lion skin and badger pelts lined with snakeskin and hawk plumage, wearing adult masks.

("_Ariana!"_)

The parchment girl goes down to the nest of adders, a whisper of snake tongue getting her into the dungeon. She goes over to the hidden boy, the only snake who clings to his mask still, the only one to truly belong there, and sits next to him. He looks at her briefly, a question in his eyes, before looking down. She answers with her foot, shorts and longs woven together to form an answer and a test. His response is more tapping, and her shark grin is the only response that he gets to his frantic calm. They stand as one, and get out of the den of vipers that fell out of the tree and broke, heading out to the cottage of the occulmens living under the snake-man's nose. Their first kiss is there, outside in the pouring rain, and the parchment girl looses some of her venom. She feels the leak, the drain on her power, and jerks away in fright, before the hole left by the ink is filled with blood and love and happiness, everything that she lost when she wrote her first words into an enchanting enchanted book, and her grin is less sharp, and her eyes aren't the cold flint that they always are. The whispered confession of _I've watched you ever since you came here, I've loved you since your blood turned to ink_ isn't as scary as it would have been a month ago, and she has something to fight for again, because _I've seen you when no one else has, when you had bruises from your mother and father, when you were were puppeteer of the scared, little dragon_. She grins, and that's the moment she will remember when he slides a necklace around her neck _because rings are too boring, anyways_, but then, they're just two people who have been in love forever and just fell in love, and there's no war anymore, it's just them two, but a coin in her pocket turns scalding and she has somewhere to be and he understands. So they walk back in the pouring rain, her hair is dripping, and it looks like a rose, because the rain washed out the blood, and the ink on her hands has been washed off, too, and her body is so light, she doesn't need a broom to fly anymore. With a grin, she ducks into the asking room, and for the next week, all of the children have a new light in them.

("_You're acting different, Nott. Anything I should know about it?"_)

But it turns cold again, the brief warm spell gone, and the peacocks have their feathers back, and she knows that there's nothing she can do about it, because as soon as she does, the dragon-bat will be taken by the cruel times, so the parchment girl watches, invisible, as her comrades are bled out, and _there's nothing that she can do_, and she knows that, and the victory that had clouded her judgment is beaten down by defeat, and the blood in her system is replaced with ink slowly. The thick, white blanket outside turns grey and loses its fluff, replaced by a thick, muddy slush, but still the parchment girl and the mastermind boy find time to be together. The lonely boy and the parchment girl and the mastermind boy end up in the whisper snake place quite often, and the blind one and the trapped one are always there to welcome them, having just laid the eggs for a brood of their own.

("_I told you they'd find a way"_)

During the change from winter to spring, the sickly, scared dragon comes to the parchment girl and asks for forgiveness and redemption, letting her look deep into his mind, and he is let into the asking room, along with the dimmed flash and the wilting flowers, but the brainless goons don't come, and they all know that they never will. Soon enough, the asking room is used to shuttle students out of the building to the safe houses that the parchment girl set up with the lonely boy, and then there are only the members of the militia and the peacocks left. The only true lion left, ancient and understanding, looks on with the dragon-bat in pride at what the students have managed to do. When the goons end up dead, the battleground weeps, but they understand and move on.

("_I'm not _sad_, just … I've known them my entire life. They deserve to be mourned."_)

The training gets more and more rigorous, they start shuttling in aurors and mediwizards and people still loyal to the light, and sure enough, their ragtag militia turns into an army. One day, the portrait opens, the parchment girl and the lonely boy poised to greet the arrivals with warm yet foreign smiles, and the lost girl steps out with her father. The parchment girl smiles and weeps, but the lonely boy rushes to her and spins her around in the air laughing, and the atmosphere seems to brighten as she leans down and their lips meet, neither dominating, neither submitting, but both working in perfect harmony. So the parchment girl turns to the mastermind boy and they both smirk, feeling just as connected as the found and loved duo from halfway across the room. She regrets it later when her not-family corners her, and when the found girl saves her, she gratefully smiles, and drags her down to the secret room, where she explains for the third time, and the no-longer-lost girl understands, too, and smiles and says everything will be alright, and for the first time, the parchment girl believes her. The found girl and the parchment girl are the first to greet the crossbred hatchlings into the cruel, cruel world that only the good can see the worth of. They go back up to the ask-room-turned-headquarters, and the quartet slip down to the kitchens to stock up on food and water for the coming wait. The found girl and loved boy go ahead, and the mastermind boy turns to the parchment girl _I have loved you forever and yet for no time at all, and we might die, but I want to die with you as my wife, marry me?_ and the parchment girl nods and he slides a necklace around her neck _because rings are too boring, anyways_, and they kiss and it's official. The next day, a pregnant auror with changing hair marries them and the found girl and loved boy witness it and the consummate their marriage in an abandoned dorm room and it's absolutely _perfect_, and nobody but the five of them knows.

("_Don't be sorry, Theo. It's perfect."_)

They're getting ready for something, because something big is coming, and the parchment girl is more ruthless than ever, because only she knows the snake-man, only she can see what he does, and she knows that all that they have to do is to get to the snake and it's all over, they'll win. The weather is getting warmer and brighter, and although the mood is still heavy there is more hope, and when the boy hero and the grounded hawk and the cinnamon ginger come stumbling through the sister-portrait's hole, the army – because that's what they are now, an army – whoops and cheers, because the time is now, but then he asks for something of the original hawk, and the parchment girl steps forward _we've already taken care of that, all that's left is the snake and the lord_, he expects her to run back to him, but she's not just ink and venom and parchment anymore, she's flesh and blood and bone, too, and is stronger than that, so she smiles sadly and tosses her long, blood hair softly. The green eyes ask _why?_ but she turns away from the question, _we have an overlord to defeat! _raising a battle cry from the readied army that she somehow became the leader of, and the underage ones respond to a unwilling summons made by the dragon-bat. The dragon-bat and the last lion are spitting, years of lost bets and petty rivalry built up to an overly sentimental mock-duel, before the dragon-bat turns to a bat and flies off and they prepare for a final battle.

("_People are going to die; maybe you. But if we don't, it'll be you and your families later."_)

The next few hours are utter chaos as they prepare for a final stand against dark and evil. There is barraging of the doors, and their lumbering occulmens brings out his share of creatures, and the parchment girl and the found girl go out and bring thestrals for them to ride into battle and centaurs to ride into battle for them, and then the found girl goes back, and the parchment girl goes deeper, and meets with the wolves and leeches, _will you please help us_ countered with _why?_ and back and forth, until they have some loyalties and some passive creatures, but no turncoats, and the parchment girl is grateful. While she is doing this, the found girl and loved boy are diving into the night back lake with webbed fingers and gills to talk to the mers. The warlike race is surprisingly cooperative, and they rise out of the water with an army in the lake to be added to the one on land. The mastermind boy is dueling strategies with the werewolf professor, both knowing _what_ needs to be done but having very different ideas on _how_ to do it, until they compromise and the plan is set and the army is ready. The found girl and the loved boy whisper promises as they embrace for the night, ready for it to be their last together, as the parchment girl and the broken boy heal themselves and know what has to be done. They sneak away for that final night, to prepare themselves for the next morning, and the parchment girl whispers something to the broken boy and they aren't so unfixable after all, because _I'm pregnant_ is answered with a _we won't be our parents – we'll be better_ and they know that no matter how this ends, they'll have each other, and, for some reason, that's good enough.

("_She'll be beautiful, just like her mother."_)

The next morning dawns cloudy as the parchment girl looks into the lake from the not-quite abandoned dormitory that she and the mastermind boy have been using, and the hair cascading down her back and flowing around her hips looks as muddled and bloody as ever. She looks at her hands, and the ink and venom is already covering them, as if in preparation of the day to come. She turns her parchment-covered body to the mastermind boy, and he reads her perfectly, and they don't exchange sentiments, for they are now strangers, and will remain so until the battle is finished, no matter what happen. They dress in silence, the only contact they have being when he brushes her hair into the rippling waves and braids it into an updo that will stay out of her face no matter the circumstances. He kisses the crown of her head and exits, his shoes making a clacking sound in the marble snake hallway that gradually dims and eventually ceases. The parchment girl looks at herself in the mirror, her parchment skin covering her white bones, her blood hair caking her frail head, her flint eyes glaring at the world. The ink and venom pulse under her parchment-skin, and she knows that she has no blood left, and that her hands are already dripping with ink and venom and red blood. She opens her mouth, and the hollow is all stained black save for her pearly white teeth and her bloody lips. She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes, preparing herself for this battle, preparing to be on the front lines of a war that has gone on far too long. She stands and closes the door with a soft _click_, and when she treads lightly down the echoing hallway, she makes no noise.

(_Be safe._)

They assemble by their assigned posts, ready and waiting, just in time of the first wave to crash into the invisible barrier and disintegrate. They all look at their comrades, looking for a comforting face, and seeing none, having been assigned to a post with no one of sentimental value. The parchment girl stands at the head, in the courtyard, flanked by the last true lion and the auror who will rule the ministry someday (if they win this). The bridges are all burned and the other entrances all sealed, except for the entrance to the pub, which is under a charm, the secret kept by the found girl. They all stand their ground as evil rushes up to meet them, raining down defenses of their own, and the army whirls and twists and ducks, raining destruction, but the foe is too much, and they are becoming an army of wounded children instead of an army of terrific warriors. And when the retreat is called, the dragon-bat comes to them, _I faked my death, please forgive me_, the hero-lion forgiving him first, the quartet second, and they have another warrior, and the rest of them are up on their feet, and there are only two casualties, versus the hundreds of the opposing littering the fields, and they're all grimly joyous, because they have a chance of winning now, if they're that good, and only the parchment girl and the broken boy and the hero-lion notice the lumbering occlumens missing, and then the announcement comes, and the hero-lion is giving himself up, and no one understands but the dragon-bat and the parchment girl and the broken boy, and they see him off, with _we'll see you later_, not _we're glad we knew you_, and they think he's grateful. They head back inside to join the feast, and they're not sure if it's night or if it's day, but they know that the ending is coming soon, no matter what time it is. And they're proven right by the call of the snake-man not twenty minutes later.

(_"Harry Potter."_)

He's dead. Dead, dead, dead, the boy-hero, the last hope is dead, stone cold dead and gon-_no!_ a cry ripped from her throat not of her own volition, and the broken boy wants to help, wants to comfort her, but they both know that he can't, and even if he could, what would he say? _It's useless_, she sobs into her not-father's shoulder, wanting her broken boy or a lost-and-found girl or an abused-but-fixed boy, and getting none of that. She feels something die inside of her, and any happiness that she'd ever felt is gone, along with any future. The snake man smirks at her, and so she pulls up all of her courage and calls softly to the snake in their shared tongue. _Come to me, I want to talk to you_. The parchment girl pools the venom in her mouth, and when the snake comes near, lifts her up and bites into her pliant underbelly. The snake falls dead in her arms, and the lord is mortal again – she can see it in his expression. With a rueful grin, she watches the snake dissolve into paper, and straightens, looking for anyone that moves when he calls for converts, but seeing something. The boy, the hero-lion, is moving, and needs a distraction, and so she pulls the puppet-dragon out of hiding _I will vouch for you in court if we win, and if we lose, well…_ The parchment girl shoves him towards the snake-lord, and he bows and professes. Hiding a smirk, she watches as the hero-lion disappears. All that's left to do is to leave it to the golden trio. She shakes her head at the loved boy, who nods in understanding. _Not now; now, we fight_. When the wall is sent up, and the hero-lion and the snake-lord are alone in the center, she knows that she was right. As the father-teacher's wand spins out of the snake-lord's hand and into the hero-lion's, she knows that they've won. And when the shriveled, old body disintegrates, she allows herself to actually smile for the first time since a little cinnamon ginger girl opened a black diary and stained her hands forever with blood and ink and venom.

("_Go, Draco."_)

Three months later, the parchment girl's in an alley preparing for her final year of schooling, taking the chance to skip the year that she learned half of. She hears her name, and the found girl and the loved boy are running up to her panting and grinning, as the no-longer-broken boy meanders over, _why must you two always make a scene_ countered with _because we're so cool everyone should pay attention to us_ and everything is okay again. But then the trio walks up, all three of them retaking the year, and they greet each other, the stiffened fixed boy receiving harsh glares and harsher words, which only stop when the found girl explains it to them. Then they lay off, but the hero-lion isn't going away, and the fixed boy is growling, and the parchment girl runs away, _oh I forgot to but something, silly me_. The hero-boy pays no heed of the warning stares, rushing off to catch up, as the fixed boy realizes where the parchment girl will go and goes through a fireplace. He waits, leaning against the counter, as the shopkeeper tries to sell him a cursed necklace and a sparkling potion. The girl darts in, _I think I lost him_, a grin, _what do we do_, a smirk _we see how long it takes him to figure it out_, a giggle _I can't wait_, and the hero-boy bursts in, _no finesse_, and the fixed boy melts into the shadows. The parchment girl grins and flirts, but he can see straight through the act, so the green monster is gone, but the hero-boy can't, _doesn't know her like I do_, and it's obvious how much she hates him. But it's amusing to watch their savior so lost in his puppy love for this beautiful, dangerous girl that he can't read any deeper than she lets him. The fixed boy lets out a snort of amusement, and continues browsing for appropriate back-to-school gifts for his little underlings, taking care to not stunt their learning too much, as it was already stunted enough last year. He smirks as he picks out a particularly embarrassing herb for the most wilted flower of his, to let her know that he is not happy. As his parchment girl leads the puppy-hero out of the store, he knows that they'll have a lot of fun this year.

("_I love you"_)


End file.
